Orlet

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The light in Ryuu’s room broke two weeks ago.

He didn’t fix it.

The bulb hung half-screwed, casting a dying flicker like the rest of his body.

It made everything in the room look like it was underwater.

Clothes piled up in the corner. Some stiff from sweat. Some crusted with blood where he’d scratched himself in sleep.

Food trays gathered dust on his desk, covered in ants.

Even the ants had started avoiding his skin.

There were days his skin would crack around his lips and bleed if he smiled.

But who smiled anymore?

“You’re so weird now.”

He heard that once. From his cousin, Ji-Hoon.

That was before the wedding, before Ryuu’s face looked like it had been scraped with sandpaper.

They were playing games on Ji-Hoon’s phone and Ryuu touched the screen with greasy, ointment-soaked fingers.

Ji-Hoon wiped it immediately and frowned.

“Why don’t you wash your hands?”

Ryuu didn’t reply.

Then Ji-Hoon said it:

“You’re so weird now.”

Not angry. Just… honest.

Like saying “The sky is blue.”

Weird.

Different.

Disgusting.

He got used to those words.

Eventually, people didn’t need to say them.

They said it with their faces.

With their body language.

Like the time at the pharmacy when the clerk wrapped his medicine in a plastic bag like it was radioactive.

Or when a child looked at his hands and whispered to her mom, “Is he a monster?”

They didn’t even see him anymore.

Just his disease.

Just the smell.

You ever smell yourself and want to vomit?

Not the funny armpit stink after gym class.

No, the kind of smell that clings to your skin and follows you into your sleep.

The kind that makes you question if you’re even human anymore.

That was Ryuu’s scent now.

Ointment. Sweat. Dead skin. Regret.

His aunt came by again.

She didn’t enter the room.

She just shouted from the hallway, “Tell your son to stop being a burden.”

His father didn’t argue this time.

His mother didn’t cry.

Ryuu, on the other side of the door, closed his eyes and whispered, “I didn’t ask to be here.”

Sometimes, he looked at the ceiling and wondered…

What if I was never born?

Would my parents be happier?

Would this house smell better?

Would my mother sing again?

Would my father joke again?

Would anyone care?

One evening, he caught his reflection in the cracked screen of his dead phone.

He looked like a corpse with a pulse.

Skin flaking.

Eyes hollow.

Hair greasy.

Shirt stained.

And then he said, out loud:

“I’m not real anymore.”

Have you ever wanted to scream but couldn’t?

Not because you were scared.

But because even your own scream felt pointless.

That’s how it felt to exist now.

His relatives had stopped visiting.

His classmates stopped messaging.

Even the school stopped asking.

The world, as far as Ryuu knew, had officially moved on.

And it hadn’t taken much time.

He remembered his childhood friend, Se-Ra.

They used to draw together.

Make paper cranes.

Eat fish cakes after school.

She used to laugh at his dumb jokes.

Until she stopped.

Until the first time she flinched when she saw his skin flaking near his eye.

Until she stopped walking home with him.

Until she crossed the street to avoid him completely.

No fights.

No texts.

Just… silence.

One day, desperate, he messaged her.

“I’m still me.”

No reply.

He stared at the screen for hours.

The message turned “Read.”

That was it.

He deleted it after two days.

And for the first time in months, he cried.

Not loud.

Not sobbing.

Just tears.

Silent.

Hopeless.

Ugly.

You think that’s dramatic?

It’s not.

It’s real.

The world is disgusting.

Not because it’s cruel.

But because it forgets people like him exist.

It forgets fast.

People move on.

They laugh.

Post stories.

Eat fancy food.

Fall in love.

And somewhere, behind a locked room,
a boy’s skin is rotting and nobody notices.

Nobody cares.

Three days ago, he tried to throw away a pile of dead skin from his bed.

He scooped it with a dustpan.

It looked like someone had peeled an entire person.

He laughed.

Then gagged.

Then threw up.

He didn’t clean the vomit.

He started imagining things.

He heard voices.

Not loud ones.

Just whispers.

“You smell.”

“You’re gross.”

“You’re useless.”

Sometimes, it was his own voice.

He wanted to vanish.

He wanted the world to hit reset.

And then…

Last night.

Around 3:12 a.m.

He was scrolling through nothing.

Not even websites. Just the brightness of the screen to distract him.

And then—

A flicker.

Just for a second.

A white screen with one line of text:

“You are not invisible here.”

No URL.

No browser tab.

Just text.

Then it disappeared.

He sat up.

“What the hell…?”

He refreshed.

Nothing.

The screen was blank.

He stared for twenty minutes.

Then whispered, like a joke:

“Is someone… watching me?”

No reply.

Just silence.

Just the darkness of his room and the scent of everything he’d become.

But for the first time in weeks,

his heart beat differently.

Not happy.

Not scared.

Just… awake.

Something had noticed him.

Something in this damn world.